5th December 2008

A Mild Attack Of The Hickox

Imagine, if you will, that one of your earliest memories was that of your mother trotting across the stage to receive the Academy Award for editing something masterful…“Lawrence Of Arabia”, perhaps. Imagine that all your bedtime stories were spun by the same the guignol-laced mind that concocted such grisly spectacle as Arthur Lowe’s impeccably messy end, scored so beautifully to Michael J. Lewis in “Theater Of Blood”. Imagine if this was how you grew up. Now imagine 35 years later directing Eddie Griffin in a remake of a 1998 German television picture?

Anthony Hickox, son of Anne V. Coates and Douglas Hickox, had that very childhood. (For the record, the German picture upon which Hickox’s movie, “Blast”, was based, was a TV movie called ‘Operation Noah’ – an indignity lessened by the fact “Blast” was scripted by Steven E De Souza, the man who blessed the world with “Knock Off”…

…“KNOCK OFF”, people!).

Hickox is something of an anomaly within the genre: a geekish devotee almost before such things existed, an heir to a minor dynasty, an auteur of sorts, but with a curious tendency to remain under-seen and perhaps under-ambitious, or more likely, an under-funded and modest craftsman toiling away in an era of engagingly motor-mouthed self-promotors trailing the road like a rock band. Hickox’s career, however, has provided collaborations with names we and more high profile filmmakers, unashamedly adore: Clive Barker, David Warner, Bruce Campbell, David Carradine, William Hurt, Ron Pearlman, Dolph Lundgren and Brian Yuzna. Yet Hickox is something of an anomoly because he’s one of a breed of veterans who have become axles behind the newly buffed hubcaps of genre’s recently explosive juggernaut; like Tobe Hooper, like Larry Cohen, like Jeff Lieberman, Jeff Burr, Michelle Soavi. They’re invariably the ones I miss the most.

Hickox’s audio commentary on Anchor Bay’s exemplary Lament Configuration set’s “Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth”, unfurls with the battle-weary, jaded jocularity of a life in the trenches, signifying someone perhaps acutely aware of the burden that has befallen him - to succeed the family name. Little wonder then that so often the character parts he takes as an actor in his own pictures, and those of other directors, are cynical, drained warriors, relinquishing life and spirit to those in the prime of life and opportunity.

A pretentious, foolhardy stretch that last point you say, reader? Please indulge me and read on, for I truly believe Hickox is no fool. A strident realist, perhaps, but there’s an earlier body of work there that betrays the present day Steven Seagal-laced rift of video mediocrity which surely pays well, yet offers little for the dextrous mind. Thanks Cthulhu that someone appears to be giving him a break: his next project, co-written with Barker-stalwart Pete Atkins, is the niftily tiled “Catwalk”, about a series of murders in New York’s fashion industry.

Perhaps in celebration of his father’s most beloved horror work (it was sadly released at the time of his father’s death) Hickox’s inaugural offering “Reise zurück in der Zeit” made an impressive impression on impressionable horror fan’s minds. (Although it was perhaps prudent that the West German title was considered unwieldy and was swiftly altered across known creation to become “Waxwork”). Infused with the recollections of a youthful horror fan -- and allegedly written at a pace that would make John Hughes weep with envy -- it’s safe to say at first glance the monsters don’t look quite like the real thing as any Universal fan might imagine. Conceivably down to stringent copyright restrictions, I like to think the reason for this lies elsewhere. I find the creation of these monsters seems governed by the same principle of Fred Dekkar’s “The Monster Squad” and the Richie Tozier’s werewolf hallucinations in “IT”: these ramshackle monsters are conjured up through the eyes of those who, like ourselves, were completely overcome when first we encountered them in the classics of horror cinema’s nascent years. It’s the mark of a fan film that those who *aren’t* true fans can never really hope to reproduce that effect (and affect) with their monsters. Proving this hypothesis? Look no further than, say, “Underworld”, “Blood & Chocolate” or “Van Helsing”…the list goes on: these films seem the poorer for their lack of fanatical passion (no matter what the PR patter surrounding their releases).

Hickox’s follow-up to “Waxwork”, “Sundown: A Vampire In Retreat”, performed a similar feat of revisionist, dead pan reverence, this time with the vampire genre. It was a film that, alongside Empire’s “Ghost Town” predated, for a shamefully brief period in the late 1980s, the recent resurgence of interest in the horror western (incidentally, if anyone reading wants to hear my pitch for one of these bad boys, you know where I am). In one respect, “Sundown” was a neat companion-piece to Larry Cohen’s “Return To Salem’s Lot” -- a breezy contemporary satire and eccentric monster movie in one. Set in the none too subtly named town of Purgatory, its tagline preaches its tone: “In Purgatory there’s two kinds of people: vampires and lunch”.

Retreating once more into the fulsome admiration of horror lore, “Waxwork II: Lost In Time” tackled a funkier array of the genre’s great and good. Nods to Robert Wise and Orlac’s severed-hand’s, proved that it wasn’t just the expected touchstones that Hickox could skewer and parody. Sure, it had a worrying central strand that presaged Hickox studio-fraught “Prince Valiant”, but with an extended, farce-like sequence which only needed to substitute bedroom doors for parallel dimensional gateways to have become “Noises Off”, it has energy and style to spare. It also included a cracking quotient of wet make up gags, from flying brains to ribcage carrion.

This led Hickox to his career high (a relative term, since he’s never capitalized on the obvious proficiency he has for genre productions): “Hellraiser III: Hell On Earth”. Much maligned, it is never the less a deceptively strong lest-gasp-of-the-20th-century horror show, very much of - and marred by - the times.

What was forgotten in the apathetic aftermath of this threequel was that the story was attributed to Barker himself, albeit watered down for a North American market. Fans will recall that the series has often suffered from this skew to commercialism, from questionable accents through to notorious censorship issues. Perhaps looking less to human/inhuman concerns and more toward the millennial anxiety of the latter half of the decade, Barker and Atkin’s story naïvely but purposefully tries to achieve what all good horror pictures aspire to: tapping into contemporary angst. Sadly for their endeavours, no decade will perhaps date quite as badly as the 1990s, and pictures which particularly tap into that zeitgeist have perhaps fared least of all. That the 90s, specifically for horror but also for society in general, were so shallow and moribund, even following the excessive 1980s, is perhaps the unavoidable fault that undermines the picture. The realisation that the 80s were so vapid led incontrovertibly to a wearying, all-pervasive arrogance and supposedly absolving self-awareness that became more and more grating , reaching it nadir with “Scary Movie” – something so spectacularly redundant as a spoof of a post-modern satire was astonishing to behold.

Hickox again, though, presented a vigorous and stylish descent into chaos, presenting as full and rich a picture as any studio horror of the time, less ambitious but more “of its time” than the exquisitely grotesque yet muddled “Hellbound”. It’s something the picture suffers for in the eyes of fans of a series that are far more attuned to the surreal, the abstract and the fantastic than are most genre aficionados.

It pokes fun at consumerism’s excesses at the very heart of its villainous line-up: a smoker, a sex machine, a deadly CD player and the fatuous modern extension of “Peeping Tom”’s Mark Lewis. It grabs that absurdity by the scruff of the neck while flipping the slasher sub-genre’s notions of urban sanctity and rural chaos on their head (with its rhythmic adherence to gory set-piece and intricate, inventive kills, it’s both a devil picture and creature feature, with the heart of a stalk ‘n’ slash firmly beating onscreen). In this New York, Hell’s Kitchen is just that. It’s a surprisingly original conceit for the time, later touched upon by pictures like “End Of Days”, marking Hickox’s picture out to be, if not a great one, then certainly an interesting one, with cine-literate allusions abound, from “Suspiria”, Bava and beyond.

Perhaps one forgets that for every “Zulu Dawn”, there is a “Discotheque Holiday” in his father’s filmography and for every “Lawrence Of Arabia” there is a “Passion Of Mind” or “Out To Sea” in his mother’s. Perhaps, knowing this and feeling that in the current climate, no matter how nepotistic the industry, the chance and ability to do “Lawrence” is atypical just as the praise for a “Theater Of Blood” is far less significant and more stigmatising. Given the immense odds of today’s filmmaking climate, its quite remarkable a filmmaker can just give in to the impulse to hack out a living rather than simply work in IT.

If so, shame for the industry. Shame on the modern, restless audience for whom the familiar is often king. And pity for the filmmaker, like Hickox, like Jeff Burr, like Tobe Hooper, like Michelle Soavi and to a lesser extent like the tenacious Larry Fessenden, who recognises the industry’s short memory. And industry run by numbers, run by demographics, run by templates, run by anything but imagination.

But “Waxwork” will, for me, always be his masterpiece. One of my favourite horror films -- indeed films in general -- it’s beyond a guilty pleasure. It was a picture that made me want to bring my own love of the genre into the industry, any way, shape or how that I might be able.

One of my favourite Clive Barker sound bites concerns the brilliance of “Suspiria”. Barker has said that Argento’s picture is“ just how you imagine horror movies to be before you’re old enough to be allowed to see them”. Of course, he was talking about the seductively illicit thrill of fear, but these are wise and applicable words none the less. They’re words that tap straight into what sets horror’s memorable pictures apart from the mediocre: they’re all personal visions, not unique to the artist maybe, but allied in the way they seek conjure up emotions within the viewer, be it fear, compassion, affection or glee.

They all come from a deep rooted dedication to the business of horror in all its forms.

One would have to be that sort of “someone” genuinely floored by “Boogeyman”’s originality to dispute David Warner’s Vincent Price-like presence which so gleefully ensures “Waxwork”’s camp malevolence. Meanwhile, the casting of henchman Hans (the jaw-droppingly odd Mihaly 'Michu' Mesza) aligns the picture firmly with “Freaks”’ three-ring circus of absurdist kismet. Youthful viewings of “Waxwork” without the contextualising immersion in the classics, is surreal indeed. A few trips to Uncle Carl Laemmle’s horror factory and it all starts to make such glorious sense.

Hickox was aged just 24 when he made the film and the youthful exuberance of a life consumed by exploitation and horror runs headlong through “Waxwork”’s unwieldy construction . One gaudy homage is trampled in its wake by the next, spattering its remnants with chintz and charnel house effects, courtesy of the great Bob Keen. That Hickox completed the picture without once vapidly aping the then in-vogue Sam Raimi-style of visual excesses (as we’ve witnessed to our chagrin over the last decades) is testament to both the young director and his reverence for dignified legacy of Hammer, Universal and their ilk.

Much like “Hatchet”, “Wrong Turn 2”, “Jack Brooks” and “Behind The Mask” are today, “Waxwork” was, almost 20 years ago, both an affectionate and knowing yet still wildly inventive debut. It’s one that too few horror adherents have seen. Those who have often dismiss as an insincere cash-in more at home with the lower end Full Moon’s catalogue of Romanian-shot oddities. My riposte is simple:

They’re wrong. So very, very wrong.

Back to
Blog Central